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In Focus: 8/27/2010

Top News

THREE PROFESSORS APPOINTED TO ENDOWED CHAIRS

Sherry Adrian, associate professor of education, has been appointed to the Herbert and Kate Dishman Professorship in Special Education.

Phil Hopkins, associate professor of philosophy and chair of the Religion and Philosophy Department, has been named the first holder of the Lurlyn and Durwood Fleming Professorship in Religion and Philosophy.

Mary Grace Neville, associate professor of business, has been appointed to the John Shearn Chair in Business. This chair was previously held by Don Parks, who retired in May.

THREE SOUTHWESTERN EMPLOYEES HONORED FOR EXEMPLARY SERVICE

Three Southwestern University employees were recently honored for exemplary service to the university.

The three received the Joe S. Mundy Exemplary Service Award, which was created in 2002 as a memorial to the leadership of former alumnus and Trustee Joe Mundy. The award honors faculty and staff members who have demonstrated exemplary service to Southwestern.

This year’s award winners were Mike Rossman, director of admissions; Francie Schroeder, executive assistant to the president; and Kenny Sheppard, professor of music. Read more here.

Events

FACULTY RECITAL AUG. 31

Soprano Dana Zenobi and pianist David Utterback will perform in a faculty recital on Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2010 at 7 p.m. in the Alma Thomas Theater. The concert will feature works by Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn, as well as a song by Franz Liszt.

The performance is free and open to the public. For more information, call The Sarofim School of Fine Arts at (512) 863-1504.

NATIVE AMERICAN LEADER TO GIVE LECTURE SEPT. 7

Comanche elder and leader Ladonna Harris will give a lecture at Southwestern on Tuesday, Sept. 7, at 4 pm in Olin 110.

Harris is the co-founder and president of Americans for Indian Opportunity (AIO) in Albuquerque, N.M. She has been a prominent leader in federal Indian policy, Indian activism, and social issues affecting all Americans for the past five decades.

Harris’ visit to Southwestern is sponsored by the Communications Studies Department. For more information, contact Dustin Tahmahkera at tahmahkd@southwestern.edu.

Notables

Reginald A. Byron, assistant professor of sociology, recently published a co-authored article in the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency (Volume 47, Issue 3, August 2010, Pages 329-357). The article is titled “Revisiting the Criminal Consequences of Commercial and Residential Density: Land Use Patterns and Violence in Neighborhood Context,” and tests two competing theories about the impact of mixed land use on murder, aggravated assault, and robbery rates in an urban area. Byron also recently had another article accepted for publication in the journal Work and Occupations. This article is titled “Discrimination, Complexity, and the Public/Private Sector Question,” and argues that human agency is essential to understanding whether competitive employment markets or formalized employment markets are less discriminatory towards racial minorities and women.

Students Juan Juarez and Jenna Gaska attended the 55th Annual Circle K International Convention in St. Louis, Mo., August 4-7. At the meeting, Juarez was elected to serve as the international representative of Subregion D in Circle K International. Gaska’s service project, “Bead the Change,” won 3rd place at the international level for best single service project in 2009-2010. “Bead the Change” is a fundraising initiative that serves two village-based organizations in rural Uganda: Revelation Childrens Ministries International and the Agoro Community Development Association. Both groups make paper-bead jewelry and other handicrafts to raise money for women and children in their communities. By providing a marketplace for these goods in the United States, Gaska has raised more than $5,400 for these two villages since December 2009, with a majority of the funds covering school fees for the children.

At the Aug. 13-17 meeting of the American Sociological Association in Atlanta, Ga., senior sociology major Kate Roberts, presented a paper titled “It Depends on Who You Ask: The Impact of Race and Ethnicity on Students’ Perceptions of the Campus Racial Climate” as part of the ASA’s Honors Program. Maria Lowe, professor of sociology, presented a paper titled “Diversity Among Activists: Factors Affecting Recruitment and Participation Patterns of College Faculty and Students in Mississippi’s Civil Rights Movement” and served on the Council of the ASA Honors Program.

Kim Smith, associate professor of art history, published an essay in the anthology Postcards: Ephemeral Histories of Modernity (Penn State University Press, 2010). In the article titled “Ambivalent Utopia: Franz Marc and Else Lasker-Schüler’s Primitivist Postcards,” Smith examines a series of watercolor postcards that Marc made for the poet Lasker-Schüler in 1913, reading them as objects born of both modernist radicalism and Germany’s imperialist imagination.